by Elif Shafak
The young Czar’s chief preacher was from the Defenders of the Faith. ‘Your Highness, it’s time to grant them permission so they can come,’ he said one day. Indeed the Czar had been on the point of thinking this for some time. ‘Yes,’ he said, nodding his head thoughtfully. ‘I grant permission. Let them come.’
They came. They came in order to root out the renegades within their ranks and put an end to dissent in the Russian Church, to purify great Russia and to standardise religious rituals, and to fan the spiritual torments of the ignorant peasants and wipe out idolatrous practices once and for all. As their numbers increased, so too did the number of those who were proclaimed to be enemies; as the number of their enemies increased, so too did the number of their victims. Because 1648 was as famous for the plague as it was for its evil consequences.
That year the Salt Revolution broke out. It was during the first days of June. A mob that somehow couldn’t reach the Czar took revenge by burning down the boyars’ houses, looting their possessions and attacking their wives. The fire started on the third of June. The flames spread quickly, and the grumbling crowd besieged the Kremlin. One of the rebels stripped naked, climbed on the shoulders of his comrades, and shouted as loud as he could:
‘I’m so hungry that to make room for what I could eat in just one sitting I would have to build a road from here to Siberia.’
Siberia wasn’t concerned about these events. He’d been deaf since birth anyway, and couldn’t hear anything that wasn’t aimed directly at his eardrum. He was aware neither that God was above nor that the Czar was far away. He was doing his own thing, playing his own game with loaded dice of mammoth ivory. The story of the Sable-Girl was rooted there; in Siberia in the first half of the 17th century.
Siberia wasn’t concerned about these events, but for some time many people had been concerned about Siberia. Beketov, who with his thirty Cossacks had founded the city of Yakutsk, wrote a report to the Czar: ‘Your Highness. After following the length of the Lena river, I reached the lands of Yakut, where I built a small tower and took the necessary defensive precautions…I have shed my blood and stained my soul for you, I have eaten horse meat and roots and pine cones and all manner of filth. Your humble servant.’
This is what he wrote in his report. This is how he and others gained their enormous wealth. From the summits of the daily growing mountains of furs, they cursed poverty and challenged nature. They didn’t care about anything except fur. The furs were so soft…Soft and warm, furry and bloody sacks of gold. The conquerors of Siberia accepted all kinds of fur. They were mostly after squirrel, fox and ermine; but especially sable. The hunters made huge fortunes from this small, nervous animal. Every day, sledges full of dead sables were piled up in the Yakutsk customs house. Every day, hundreds of sable furs were given a value of thousands of gold coins. Those who had arrived at the beginning of the season had long since filled their money bags. Nor did one often meet any who had decided they’d made enough and that it was time to go back. These hunters couldn’t get their fill. More furs, more protection money, more power…Siberia had more, and they wanted more.
In wide squat cabins built of huge tree trunks and with transparent fish skin stretched across the windows, the hunters waited months for the coming of spring, and the melting of the snow. The beds next to the brick stove belonged to the strongest. The strongest were the cruelest. The rest warmed their beds with prostitutes. But if they continued to feel cold anyway, they would secretly take the dreams being dreamt by those next to the stove, and cover themselves in their warmth. Those whose dreams were stolen would wake up shivering, listen to the snores, mutters, moans and gnashing that broke the silence of the night, and wait for their eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. But no matter how carefully he looked, he couldn’t determine who the thief was. In any event, everyone here was more or less a thief.
Rancour spread insidiously like a disease, and because revenge waited like an animal in ambush for the right moment to strike, the gambling around the stove every evening would be the cause of vicious fights. Sometimes the fights would subside by themselves. Then, the game would be resumed where it had been left off. Because for the hunters a broken arm or a broken leg was worse than death. Sometimes, too, even the simplest argument could end in murder. But even so, the friends of the murdered man wouldn’t make too much of a fuss, because they preferred not to risk being crippled. In any event, everyone here was more or less a murderer.
The smell in these cabins was so heavy that it even covered those who were sleeping here for only one night. Even from the first days, the fur trappers who spent their nights in these cabins began to stare in the same way, at the same vanishing point. Far away, farther away than could be seen, the snow would be melting drop by drop. By the time the roads were clear, they’d long since finished making their preparations. The hunters would set out with the intense impatience that follows months of waiting; they would gather the tax the natives within the borders had to pay the Czar, and gifts for themselves. Natives who had never seen the Czar’s face or heard his name had to pay him a tax and had to give gifts to the hunters whose faces they didn’t like and whose names they couldn’t learn. If they didn’t, they faced heavy punishment. The fur hunters decided how far they would venture into the interior of Siberia.
In fact all of the hunters had come here with the intention of getting rich as quickly as possible and then going back. But now, with lands to be conquered lying naked and defenceless before them, they didn’t feel like going back to the cities of Russia where it was much more difficult to make a living. Every time they unloaded their sleds at the customs house and filled their money-bags, they turned around and dove once more into the whiteness, the solitude, the boundlessness. When there were fewer places left to discover, the yet undiscovered places increased steadily in value. Now everyone was coveting north-east Siberia. They said it was a paradise; a paradise of furs for the ambitious sons of poor mothers who had gone out into the world without ever having been wrapped in a fur. By 1630 the Cossacks had already set sail on the dark waters, having decided the north-east of Siberia could be reached by sea.
Their so-called boats were made of oak branches strapped together; they used no tar or nails. The sails were made of deer skin, and without a wind behind them they couldn’t continue their journey. The constantly shifting icebergs cut the leather straps and smashed the boats to pieces. The crew were constantly suffering from hunger, filth, and attacks of scurvy. Those who died were buried with their dreams, and the rest continued to nurture their dreams.
The sailors used to tell a variety of stories about Siberia. About ice formations that from afar resembled swords, glittering brightly as one approached, and about strange plants that were invisible when you were right next to them; plants that fed on the songs of insects, and that swallowed themselves when they couldn’t find the voice of an insect to suck. Mother-of-pearl mermaids who called out the name of each sailor’s mother from the tops of icebergs, the wonderful play of lights when ice-floes bade farewell to each other as they broke up, eye-fish who watched the world from beneath the icebergs, and whose presence was never felt if they weren’t trapped, repulsive reptiles who climbed onto the ship and gnawed at the noses of the sailors. Primitive natives whose heads looked as if they might roll off at any moment because they had no necks, and whose sex was impossible to distinguish…
There was a man in one of the ships sailing to north-east Siberia. His name was Timofei Ankidinov. He was a sable trapper, like hundreds of others. He wouldn’t listen to the stories the sailors told. He only cared about one legend: Pogicha!
The legendary Pogicha River was beautiful enough to believe in and more beautiful when believed in. It would smile delicately after a fog like the fading face of a lost lover. It was always far away, eternally far away. As one approached it, it drew further away. Those who arrived in north-east Siberia, scattering sable carcasses that wouldn’t fit into their sleds behind them was they went, s
wore that they wouldn’t return until they’d heard the roar of the Pogicha River. And perhaps once they arrived, they wouldn’t want to return. There had to be thousands of sable wandering the banks of the Pogicha River, with their coal-black eyes and their coal-black enchantment. There were paths lined with walrus tusks leading to hollows full of emeralds. The waters of the Pogicha were quite warm, in places to the point of boiling. The waters of the Pogicha were restorative, and it was enough to bathe in them once to cure all wounds. After flowing warmly and gently, the waters emptied into a placid lake. The lake glittered brightly from a distance, and its bed was full of enormous pearls. The shadow of a mountain that seemed far by day and near by night was constantly on the surface of the lake. From time to time, silver boulders rolled off the mountain. When two silver boulders collided, it would rain on the lake. The drops would leave phosphorous stains behind them. Isolated from the rest of the world, the rain would write aimless poems on the Pogicha.
Timofei Ankidinov sincerely believed everything that was told about the Pogicha. He didn’t simply believe that the Pogicha existed; he believed it existed for him alone, and was waiting for him. Timofei Ankidinov was a sable trapper, like hundreds of others. He believed that, as his life had been so bland, and as his face was of a type that was so average and left so little trace on the memory, and as since birth he had had to wear himself out simply to be noticed by others; of everyone on the face of the earth, of every member of the human race, no one had more right than he did to see the Pogicha. He was so caught up in the legend that he referred to the Pogicha as ‘my elegant lady’, and whenever anyone else mentioned the name, and he saw that they were nursing dreams about it, he went mad with anger. The legend was promised to him and to him alone.
Indeed it was for this reason that even when the ship in which he had travelled for weeks was sinking into the dark waters he knew he wouldn’t die. He was so sure he wouldn’t die before he found the Pogicha that he didn’t even struggle to swim to the shore. He was waiting for a magical hand to reach out from among the ice floes and pull him out. When he finally reached the shore, he encountered one of the sailors from the ship. The two men, as a consequence of having emerged unscathed from a terrible accident, embraced each other and kissed each other’s cheeks with shame and delight and turned to look at the sea with surprise; where not long before a black whirlpool had been sucking down the wreckage, white bubbles were now being thrown up with the remains of the wreckage.
Meanwhile, blood from the wound on the sailor’s head was filling his eyes, and lumps of black, clotted blood were forming in his hair. Nevertheless, the sailor didn’t seem to be in a state to feel pain. With a sweet smile on his face, he was looking at the sea. A wave with a mischievous heart, a pale countenance and a lisping tongue was walking right up behind him. Under the wave, hundreds of hollows and thousands of depths had entered it and were increasing with passion; that’s why its heart was mischievous. Within the wave, hundreds of sables had joined hands with thousands of shadows; that’s why its countenance was pale. On top of the wave, hundreds of voices and thousands of echoes were screaming to the point of choking; that’s why it lisped. The wave was washing gently over his toes, sweetly tickling whatever it touched.
Timofei Ankidinov was aware that his friend was about to freeze. Because freezing was that kind of thing. A death that didn’t end. Not the kind whose progress is punctuated, nor the kind that one can come to prepared; neither an end to life nor the beginning of another time…only, but only a flowing away into the distance, from here into the distance…because freezing was that kind of thing; that is, to flow, that is not to stop while flowing, that is to flow as far as being unable to stop. Without threshold, without stages, without inconvenience. And because it was fluid in this way, it was the only death that drew a person’s blood without injuring them. It would spread a warm feeling of consolation concerning life’s final puzzle with its icy palms. On top of this, it believed what was believed about it. Freezing was a death that was fundamentally denial, and rebelled against its own existence. It whispered softly into its victim’s ear. With delight it would tell stories that were woven from lies. Then, it would suddenly fall quiet, and try to leave with its story only half told. The victim would hurriedly embrace the warm consolation spread by the icy palms; he would not give it permission to leave. Freezing was the only death that asked its victim’s consent.
Freezing was the only death that made one smile as it killed.
The sailor was smiling peacefully.
Timofei Ankidinov was watching him anxiously.
While this was happening on the shore, a little further away, in an overturned basket, a beardless youth was facing the most difficult test of his life.
The beardless youth was attached to a native tribe, and had been waiting in the basket for all of three days. For all of three days he had been combing this blind darkness. He would not have said that he missed the light. Just as a person would not want to eat something new in order not to lose the taste of something he had eaten, he didn’t want to see anything new in order that his eyes not lose the image of the last thing he’d seen.
The last image his eyes had seen was that of his elder sister’s lifeless body. It was stretched full-length on the ground. Her very long, jet-black hair waved in the wind that rose from the frozen ground. The whole tribe was in mourning. They didn’t even have a single shaman. The elders thought that the migrating soul of the shaman might take its place in her brother. The look in the boy’s eyes was like that of a sable familiar with death. They were as black as a sable’s eyes. Looking deeply into his pupils, it was clear that he could be the new shaman. But no one knew yet if he was the right person. In order to know it was necessary to test him.
Once the boy learned that he was to be tested, he would run away from people and avoided asking questions. At night, before leaving the village with the others, he cut off a lock of his sister’s hair, and ate a slice of her flesh. This was the last thing that had entered his stomach, which was now gathering together like an empty sack, becoming smaller as it did so, and, as it grew smaller, gnawing at the emptiness within him.
Drums were played along the entire route. Later, when they reached the shore, they lit a huge fire and arranged themselves around it; women on one side and men on the other. The boy, next to the fire, dove into the body of his mother, who was beside herself, and whose body was as tense as a bow, and whose looks pierced him like an arrow. As dawn broke, the fire went out, and the basket was placed in the centre. When he emerged from the basket three days and three nights later, he would either be a shaman or a nothing.
When he stroked the walrus-tusk necklace his mother had given him, he was overcome with despair. They’d gone by now, all of them had gone. The boy remained all alone in the snow, inside an overturned basket. Since then he hadn’t eaten a single bite or uttered a single word. Until He arrived, not a bite nor a word would pass his lips. He was waiting for Him; his soul’s equal, the visitor who was the soul of his equal. The visitor he was waiting for could be a human or an animal or a plant. The visitor would either grant him superhuman powers and make him a shaman just like his sister, or the complete opposite, indeed he might even be punished for his presumption: Whatever happened, whatever the risks were, he was waiting for Him. If the visitor was human He would arrive on foot, if a bird, flying, if a fish, swimming, and if it was a plant it would emerge from the snow, see the basket and come. He would come and decide whether the boy was to be the tribe’s new shaman.
The beardless youth couldn’t keep a strange sense of distress from eroding his courage. Even if he hadn’t admitted it to himself yet, and even if he didn’t know the reason for it, he felt a terrible fear of being seen.
The sailor was smiling peacefully.
Timofei Ankidinov was watching him anxiously. On one hand he couldn’t rein in his jealousy at the thought that the sailor might be dreaming about the Pogicha, and on the other he was looking for some way
to keep the man from freezing.
The visitor hadn’t come yet. The beardless youth was thinking neither about his elder sister nor about the name he would be given when he became shaman. He was miserable from hunger, weariness and fear. He could change his mind at any moment, but he didn’t have the strength to change his mind
At that moment his whole body shook. Something had entered the basket. For a while he stood waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, as if he hadn’t been living in this complete darkness for three nights, and as if when the visitor came He wouldn’t bring yet another curtain of darkness. An indistinct figure slowly became apparent. It was a big sable. It was at least five times bigger than other sables. When the boy saw it he couldn’t keep from smiling. This meant that the visitor he’d been awaiting so long was a sable that was his reflection in this world, a mirror of his face. This meant that, just as their eyes were identical, his soul also resembled this agile animal.
The boy and the sable stood eye to eye.
The boy and the sable looked at their resemblance. Both of their eyes shone with the knowledge of death. They were like two mirrors facing each other. As they looked, they flowed into each other and strengthened one another. Then they shut their eyes tightly. Then, in a manner that was both relaxed and energetic, and as if they were out in an open field rather than in that narrow basket, they began to dance the ancient dance of the shamans. The sable licked the boy’s wounds. Every wound healed as soon as the animal’s tongue touched it.
